Teacher Coach, Mike Poss, posted Atul Gawande's book, The Checklist Manifesto, as a "powerful reminder of the importance of communication and teamwork," which reminded me of a talked I'd seen on 99u. In his talk, The 3 Habits of Great Creative Teams, Keith Yamashita describes duos as, "the smallest atomic unit of trust." Working along side a partner allows us to start small, test the waters, and get feedback along the way. And from there we can scale up.

So, try this: pick one thing from your list of things you'd like to change next year, grab a partner, and use the design thinking framework to problem solve together. Track your journey, and see what you learn along the way!

Questions/comments led me to this:

This makes me think about my own partnerships and the role they play in my life. Generally, I would say that productive partnerships take 3 forms for me:

1. I'm being coached 2. I'm coaching 3. We're learning together

I'm oversimplifying a bit here because point #3 is always a factor for me if I'm labeling a partnership as "productive."

This is also making me think more about my own intentionality when it comes to cultivating rituals and routines. For example, right now I am trying to develop habits around systematically tracking my thinking. As a result, I find myself asking friends and colleagues about systems which they use and have generated ideas around systems I COULD use rather than systematically testing strategies. By cultivating a system which helps me track my thinking and build upon previous conversations and ideas, I would also - conveniently - be working to create a culture of innovation. I think there is a link between innovation and communication. One part of innovation is being able to communicate the story behind (or the progression of) ideas. Without a record of both artifacts and reflection or personal commentary, that story becomes harder for me to tell, and often my ideas become lost.

Given that, I asked: Guild teachers, is anyone interested in buddying with me to flesh out the rituals and routines around the tracking of thinking?

While I didn’t receive any direct responses to my ask, by throwing it out there it became real - for me. I couldn’t ignore it anymore.

So I decided to start capturing my thinking - as demonstrated by my photos here: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0B3sNMLlRtNECU3F0amF4Tjcyemc